Retrovailles
by starlit skyes
Summary: The years passed like moths disappearing into the blackness of night. Their lives were like parallel lines - continuous, identical and forever bound to each other, but never meeting, never concluding - never becoming one.


_All alone in space and time,_

_There's nothing here_

_but what here's mine_

_Something borrowed, something blue _

_Every me and every you. _

-**Placebo**

* * *

After the onset of the War, they had lost each other.

She still remembered the night he had appeared at her window. The moonlight allowed her to see a sliver of his face, and the hard, unrelenting glint in his eyes. He had simply appeared there, and when she had crept out of bed to let him in, he had whispered, "No."

Hadn't this always been the way with Draco?

She was a door, the door to many beautiful things, and he would always approach this door with questions in his eyes, and the desire for something more. He would approach this door helplessly, as though he was drawn to it with his every pore, as though he just couldn't fight it. And she, with all love in her heart, would consent to open these doors, to let him in, to allow him to consume her, to allow him entrance into her world.

Draco would whisper - with fear in his eyes, with indecision, with the distinct coldness of one who shunned happiness, fearing that it would make him weak - "No."

That night, he had told her that he did not have the strength to defy his father, to defy his family, to defy the Dark Lord. He did not have the strength to succumb to his emotions, his guilt, and his clawing regret. He did not have the strength to stay.

Ginny had gazed down at him, framed by the panes of her windows, like he was already just a picture, just a memory of a passing time - and she realized that she'd never had the strength to make him stay. Maybe she was too proud, maybe she hated him for being weak, maybe she just wanted to prove it made no difference to her. Maybe she knew it just wouldn't make a difference.

The years passed like moths disappearing into the blackness of night. She knew he was alive - she'd seen his shadows in the midst of battle, she'd seen the blur of his wand, she'd seen him run away from death. She'd seen the pictures in the papers.

His life occurred outside of her, apart from her, like the independent thing it was - and yet, it occured inside her heart, as though a version of him lived within her brain. Somehow, as the years passed, even as she missed him so terribly she had no tears left to cry, it was as though she knew exactly where he was. Exactly what he was feeling. She knew his every thought and word, simply because she loved him. She loved him, and she made him a ghost inside of her - and like this, she kept him alive.

Their lives were like parallel lines - continuous, identical and forever bound to each other, but never meeting, never concluding - never becoming one.

She would see someone on the street with silver-gray hair, and for a moment her heart would pound painfully in her chest, and she would think, _That's him. _

_It's him, it's really him. _

_It's his hair, those are his shoulders, that's how he walks. It's him. _

And then, as her heart slowed, she would notice deliberate mistakes. The suggestion of a beard, an unfamiliar shirt, the signs of age, a change in his gait, in his grace. The ghost of Draco would turn into a stranger before her eyes, but she was never sure.

In her heart, she would wonder - perhaps he had changed.

Perhaps he walked differently now, talked differently; perhaps his face now showed signs of age or an unfamiliar maturity, because Merlin knew that it had been years since she had last seen him.

She couldn't possibly expect to see him the way she remembered him - and so, in her mind, he changed with passing time, changed in all the ways he could change. His hair grew, and then was cut short - his sprightly, beautiful walk turned to one of smooth ease and lazy grace, and within her, he lived. His life was a line that followed hers, right beside hers, but never meeting. She saw a million ghosts of him, and she lived with these ghosts that surrounded her, changing before her eyes, changing in the way she knew only Draco could; reacting to passing time in familiar, dear ways that she would never forget. He was an endless time lapse of sunsets and sunrises, of shadows snaking across the light in her rooms, of every thing that lived and died. She had not heard from Draco Malfoy in more almost five years, and yet, it was as though she saw him live right in front of her - as though she gazed through a strange window and there he was, unaware of her, but still hers.

She grew to love this strange memory of Draco - this maturing, familiar memory, because she did not fear losing it. She remembered every little thing about him, and she saw, in her mind's-eye, his entire life. She was almost happy, because she finally had some portion of him, that was entirely hers. That lived within her, and would continue to exist within her until she died.

Until one day, when there was a knock upon her door.

It was near dark, the night falling outside her window like a curtain upon an empty stage, and she was wearing a soft silk dressing gown. It was the palest shade of lavender, and her red hair fell upon it in soft curls. In her hands she held a book, and a glass of red wine, and she answered the door with the beginning a tired sigh behind her lips.

He stood there, dressed completely in black. He stood there, almost exactly as he had been five years ago - he stood there, completely unchanged, and his eyes bore the same powerful, burning love for her that she had seen within them, all those years ago.

Her first thought was that this was a stranger - _finally_ a stranger who looked exactly like Draco Malfoy. This was a stranger who actually looked at her the same way Draco used to - this stranger, he even wore the same clothes. She had been looking for such a stranger for five years - a stranger that might actually replace her memories - and now, so unexpectedly, she had found one.

He looked at her with gaunt, shadowed eyes, and said hoarsely, "I can't do it anymore, I can't stay away. Ginny, I..."

Why, this stranger, he knew her name already.

He ran shaking fingers through his silver hair, just the way Draco used to. "Please let me in, Gin. I have so much to say to you."

She stared at him like she had seen a ghost, but she didn't recognize the words that escaped her lips. "Where the fuck have you been?"

And suddenly, a familiar desire was overpowering his face, a fierce, all-consuming need, and he had pushed her against the wall. She heard him slam the door behind them. She barely heard the whisper of the book fall to the ground, the shattering of the wine glass, the slow red stain spreading across her rug.

Suddenly, his lips were on hers, bruising them with their intensity, owning them as though they would always be his - he was kissing her, not as though he hadn't kissed her in years, but as if these were lips he would always kiss, lips he would always possess the very same way. As though, within her lips, time ceased to even matter.

"Wait," she gasped, even as his hands went down her sides, twined into her hair, pulling up her face once more to meet his - "Wait, Draco, you can't just -"

He was everywhere, the familiar scent of him, the familiar arms, the very same chest. Suddenly, she was sixteen again, and all the years disappeared, his lips pulling her back into what she had perhaps always been.

Her hands found his chest, and she pushed him away with all her might. "No," she said, her voice shaking. "How dare you. You can't just walk in here after all this time, and expect everything to be - no, you can't do that, you can't..."

He looked at her, breathing heavily, his skin flushed, his eyes burning into hers with an emotion she suddenly did not want to comprehend.

"I need you," he said finally. "I love you. I always have. I always will."

He was everywhere again, his lips everywhere, and soon she was sighing his name, just as she always had. She allowed herself to, because she was sixteen again, and he was everywhere, and she simply could not resist. Time just wasn't important anymore - it didn't exist anymore - and it was just the feel of him, the smell of him, the taste of him, as it had always been.

Finally, when she lay against his shoulders, spent and utterly his, she looked at him - his tousled silver hair, the joyful relief in his eyes, every part of him - and she thought that this was a stranger that loved her just like Draco Malfoy had.

This was a dream that she'd had, this was her every wish, her every desire - this was a ghost, and that's all it was. She could not understand this as a reality - his absence, his familiarity, his love - and so she understood this the only way she could. This was the way she had felt that first time, when she had seen a man on the street with silver-gray hair, and her heart had gushed with a shocking joy. This was the way she'd felt all those times she'd found fond little things in her world that her triggered her memory, and reminded her of him. This was nothing else.

Their lives were parallel lines, lines that would always follow the same path, lines that would always continue side by side - and parallel lines are beautiful in the certainty that they will never, ever meet. If they did, they would cease to be parallel, they would deviate from their paths, and would cease to be so familiar, so tightly bound together.

She realized, as she looked at him lying beside her, that he hadn't apologized. He hadn't said sorry for leaving her for so long, for disappearing from her life. It was simply as though the time had never passed - as though nothing had changed - and this is what made him a stranger to her, what made him alien and unknown. In her mind, he had changed, grown, along with her. The man that lay in her bed now was simply an achingly familiar dream.

His lips were at her ear. "You'll always be mine," he whispered. "That'll never change."

She lay by his side, and felt time pressing down upon her like a blanket. Five years had passed - his body lay alongside hers, parallel, and she made sure that even as she lay by his side, no inch of her skin touched his again that night.

* * *

**AN:** My first fanfic after two years.

*breaks down crying*

I realize this kind of sucks, but it feels lovely to write this again. Please be kind and REVIEW!


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